The Lady in the Lab Coat
by UnderThePureMoon
Summary: She was so many things to so many different people. - Claire, her suitors, Bill, and Clive.
1. the angel

**Author's Note: Yayyyyyyy! I finally got this up here! I'm very happy about this. You see, I meant for these to be around 300 or less words at first, but later decided 400 or less, and yeah.**

**Don't own anything.**

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**one. the angel**

Hershel had always believed the girl was heaven sent.

The product of angels carving a magical wonder.

With her neatly tousled red curls and beautiful, sparkling brown eyes that shone, even from behind her glasses, Hershel knew this woman was a goddess with a mind to match that beauty.

(She is neither Athena nor Aphrodite. She is _both_.)

He stammers and blushed when he first meets her, a notion she finds adorable, and he always fidgets around her when they speak.

(something he has _never_ done around any girl before.)

Hershel comes from tales of sorrow, but sweet, gorgeous Claire has become the light.

And_ fuck it all_, he loves her.

He has pondered if it was love at first sight for him, but he can never be sure because he was just too_ enchanted_ by her to think of _why_ he was enchanted in the first place.

She was an angel on earth.

She has gifted him with a hat today - something rare and strange, but unusually perfect (kind of like the way he feels about her.)

A gift like no other he has ever received.

He has a gift for her, too - something he picked out while she was at work, but she won't get it until their dinner tonight.

When he was choosing his gift, oh-so-carefully, because for her it had to be perfect, his hat won funny looks and even some compliments.

But then, he hears sirens on his way home, and his curiosity peaks, so he tries to ask around.

Then he hears it.

An accident at Claire's - his angel's - building.

And when he holds that sobbing boy, devastated and broken beyond the ability to fix, he has his last tiny, tiny shred of hope torn to pieces by a scientist who worked with Claire.

His eyes are puffy and his face looks defeated.

And Hershel, as he drops the velvet box with the gorgeous,_ perfect_ engagement ring, knows that god has called Hershel's angel back to heaven.


	2. the flora

**Author's Note: I don't like this couple, but this is probably my favorite one. Flora meaning the scientific word for FLOWER, NOT THE CHARACTER.**

**I don't own Professor Layton.**

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**two. the flora**

Dimitri first sees her when he and Bill start their project.

In a world of barely any supporters, and many, many nonbelievers, Dimitri is convinced, however illogical it may be, that she is a beautiful, beautiful rose.

Or, her hair is.

Red locks gently frame her face - perhaps not rose red, but you get the picture - and they curl delicately, like the way a rose gently turns inwards. (He should know. Roses are his favorite, after all.)

Perhaps it was illogical - okay, it was so illogical - but she reminded him of a flower with the way she did everything.

With the way her brown orbs dazzled and twinkled, even when her glasses fogged, and the way she did everything gently and _perfectly_, there was no way she was not the most beautiful thing - flower - he had ever seen.

She was drop dead gorgeous, and they even shared the same true love:

science!

It was an easy thing to bond over, really.

He made sure he watered the flower - with compliments - but he found himself being too..._ modest_ with the way he felt about her.

He tried not to pay attention to the flower's other gardener - the one the flower grows and responds to - but she had chosen that other gardener anyway.

Still, he_ never_ forgot to water his flower.

And he begged and pleaded with Bill that the garden was not ready to be harvested yet - meaning he had not won her over yet - but to no avail.

("After all, Dimitri, the show must go on," Bill had told him, aware of Dimitri's feelings.)

And as he runs to his garden one last,_ awful_ time, he finds his beautiful, favorite flower - his _rose_ - wilted and done for.


	3. the juliet

**Author's Note: Paul is Don Paolo, in case you didn't know.**

**Heh, I don't own anything.**

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**three. the juliet**

Paul could barely speak to her, but yet he still loved her.

He had always felt forbidden to talk to her. That they were '_star-crossed_' lovers. (or something like that.)

Perhaps it was the other men ogling (though he prefers _admiring_) her or perhaps he was too shy.

All he knew was that she was his one and only Juliet.

She was beautiful, enchanting and _forbidden_.

She had caught him staring at her once. And he pretends that this is when they'll start meeting in secret gardens and rocks will be tossed at her window... but that is just his boyish fantasy.

But if she found the staring strange, she never showed it.

His Juliet found what he was doing sweet.

(Even though it could _easily_ be compared to - or called -_ stalking_.)

His Juliet must've taken it as a _confession_.

A confession of his love.

Paul knows that he is competing with the two others for her heart. They're all tossing rocks (metaphorically... well, he hopes so, anyway) her window, waiting for her to toss down her beautiful hair (or is that another story?).

His sweet, endearingly..._ creepy_ gestures are not what win her over.

His Juliet has not chosen him at all.

She chooses another man - one that "admired" her as well as spoke to her.

Something Paul has never done. (The speaking, that is.)

And it _enrages_ him.

Angry tears pool from his eyes as he runs from his lovely Juliet - for he could never hate her - and the man he now hates.

He tries to run as far away as possible - a reflex for Paul to runaway from what is hurting him - and is met with a huge _splash_!

As his salty tears mix with the fresh water, he tries to forget her and her lovely, delicate features and that smile and everything he loved about her.

But he cannot.  
And when his heart is finally healing - just a little - Romeo and Juliet's places switch.

Now Paul, the Romeo, awakes to find his lovely Juliet, _Claire_, gone forever.

And just as fast as his heart healed, it breaks all over again. Paul is sure that he will never be healed of the loss of his Juliet.


	4. the lab-rat

**Author's Note: Yeahhh, I always wanted to piece together what Bill was thinking. I still hate him, but since I wrote this, I pity him a little.**

**I don't own anything.**

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**four. the lab-rat**

There was once a time Bill tried to convince himself that, like all the other men that surrounded her, he was in love with Claire - but he always knew he did not.

He couldn't have and all the evidence he needed to prove it was right in front of him.

The way Dimitri and that other man - the one he presumed was her boyfriend - stared at her with their eyes that lit up and ogled and admired. The way their cheeks flared every time she looked at them.

Her supposed boyfriend was always holding onto her image and her words - as if to conserve it. He always did things more gentle, more lovingly than Dimitri ever had, even though it was bloody obvious with the way he stared and shit that he was head over heels in love with the lab assistant.

Bill liked Claire, and he_ knew_ that he didn't love her, per se, the way the others did.

Perhaps it was a fatherly kind of love.

He loved her as a daughter, perhaps.

(_You know you hate her, Bill_.)

But then, he ponders, if he had really loved her like a daughter, why was it so damn _easy_ to use her as a testing subject?

It should've been difficult to use her as a... a _lab-rat_ and go against Dimitri - his_ partner's_ - wishes in order to satisfy his own greed.

The choice should've been difficult.

(_But it wasn't, now was it?_)

It should've destroyed him that he had unintentionally killed his "daughter" figure.

(_You_ still_ think that it was unintentional, don't you, Bill?_)

Bill had decided that ever since the beginning, she had just been the assistant, a friend.

(His thoughts keep hissing things like "Friend? _You've_ always _hated her, you idiot. And you don't know why, but you_ _always did, and you_ still_ do._" And they were twisted and evil and they were splitting his head open, one side a murderer and the other a sad, defeated man.)

By the end, she was a lab-rat, used only for testing.

A rat never to be cared about again once she was gone.


	5. the pretty lady

**Author's Note: By the end of writing the first one, I was depressed, by the end of writing this one (WRITING ABOUT CLAIRE'S DEATH FIVE TIMES AND CLIVE'S PARENTS IN THIS ONE TOO? I MEAN...) I was DESTROYED. this was waaaaaaay over 400 words.**

**I don't own anything.**

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**five. the pretty lady**

Clive is young and understands little - maybe more than a boy his age should, but still very little.

He and his parents - always so happy - go out on walks. Clive likes to people-watch as they talk about "_grown-up things_" that he doesn't understand and sometimes he thinks he never will. And on these pretty, happy walks, he sees this couple - of course, they're a _happy_ one, Clive doesn't pay much attention to people who aren't - that _sortofmaybekindof_ remind him of his own parents.

This couple is always laughing and talking and holding hands and they just look so god damn happy that Clive has to smile at them.

The woman, Clive notes, is very pretty. Clive understands attraction - infatuation, more like, because boys do get crushes on the girls in school, don't they? - but his knowledge is limited to puppy love school crushes.

The lady has shining eyes that show his reflection when she smiles at him. He addresses the man, just before his normal walk, as he waits for his loving parents.

"Hey! Hey, Mister!" he shouts, perhaps a little too loudly.

The man looks down in a friendly way when Clive tugs on his shirt.

"Where's that pretty lady?" Clive asks.

The man - even though he knows young children ask five million questions a minute - can't help but become flustered as he tries to answer. The answer isn't heard, because as soon as he opens his mouth, Clive's mother appears, ready to chastise her curious little boy.

"Clive! You know it's impolite to bother strangers!"

(Okay, she really wanted to say not to talk to them, but the man hardly looks suspicious.)

"Oh, it's not trouble at all. Really," the pretty lady - who came out of nowhere - says, kissing the flustered man's cheek.

(He turns redder, and Clive smiles.)

That is the last walk Clive has before the explosion.

He had been out waiting again - farther than usual - petting dogs and waiting for the man to show up with the pretty lady in tow when he hears it.

He runs back to his home, crying and wailing, and he is slapped and comforted by the man - the one he likes to question. That is the last time he sees this man in his childhood years.

Clive tugs on his shirt, one last time.

"Hey Mister," he says, sniffling and sad and quietly, "Where's that pretty lady?" Clive asks, tears still fresh in his eyes.

The man sobs.

**.**

**.**

**the end**


End file.
